Maite Garcia: Dallas Buyers' Club - a chance to live

A homophobic, drug addicted womanizer, this is the way Matthew McConaughey's character is introduced, a Texan rodeo cowboy called Ron Woodroof, whose life has been a path full of big excesses. Based on a real story, Woodroof's adventure works as a pretext to present the terrible HIV virus and its consequences during the eighties.

The behaviour of this selfish guy is cut short when he is diagnosed AIDS and given only a few weeks to live. After some intense moments of doubts and a gloomy relapse, Ron Woodroof doesn't give up; instead of passively accepting his fate, he decides to look for an alternative treatment to delay the effects of his awful disease, since up to that moment the only commercialized drug is AZT, but with little success. Therefore, he acts decisively and faces up to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) after travelling to México in order to buy non-approved medication. 

Rapidly, he becomes a genuine smuggler of antivirals, vitamins and peptides. Woodroof changes many people's lives as well as his own, as this cause connects him to some unknown figures; one of them played by Jared Leto, a transvestite homosexual infected with the HIV virus. Together, they will start a large distribution center called "Dallas Buyers Club", which will be constantly fighting against the United States' legal system. 

The two Oscar-winning actors in action

As all critics have agreed, the film’s plot is punctuated by extraordinary, emotive performances. Most remarkable has been Mathew McConaughey's. Until today he was known to the Academy as a leading man from the genre of romantic comedies, but thanks to his fantastic role in Dallas he has achieved the highest recognition from the American industry, an Oscar for best actor in a leading role. Not only have we been impressed by his extreme physical transformation but also by the roller-coaster of emotions he manages to transmit. The other Oscar-winning actor, Jared Leto, fills his acting with several tinges, so that the audience connects immediately with his feelings since he oozes sensibility and charm. I guess the director Jean-Marc Vallée has contributed to the success of their performances, as even Jennifer Garner, in a modest secondary role, has improved her acting skills significantly compared to previous films. 

I love this movie, especially because of the way all these characters, each one of them coming from different origins and having such distant ideologies or lifestyles, intertwine their lives. However, their differences are not a handicap to fight for life.  Dallas Buyers Club is a marvelous, thought-provoking film in which the director deals with issues which unfortunately are so contemporary. If I had to underline a particular scene, I would recall one when Ron is portrayed surrounded by butterflies; it seems to me a gorgeous metaphor of our existence. Simply fantastic! 

Thanks Maite for another great post! You hadn't written any stuff since that early review of Nosferatu, so welcome back.

As you know, I saw "Dallas ..." too and I really loved it, even if it's rather tough to watch at times. Films dealing with the plague caused by HIV since the mid-1980s in America are always extremely gruesome (Philadelphia and The Hours, to name a few, are two titles you may remember). 

Honestly, I'd never thought much of Matthew McCounaghey as an actor before his awesome role in this film. To me, maybe wrongly, he was just the classic "rom com" ladies' man. But all of a sudden he puts so much of himself into this character, both physically (seemingly he lost some 50 pounds) and emotionally. Also worth mentioning is Jared Leto's heart-rending performance - no wonder they both scooped well-deserved statuettes at this year's Oscars.

So let me just embed the film's trailer for those of you who may have not seen Dallas Buyers Club yet, arguably one of the best, most successful independent films of 2013. 

Maite Garcia - My favourite scene: Troy

Troy is an epic film which tells the story of the victories and tragedies happened in the legendary War of Troy. Its plot is based on the Greek epic poem "The Iliad", the most ancient poem of Western literature, written by Homer. This film also includes material from other sources such as "The Odyssey" by the same writer or "The Aeneid" whose author is Virgil. 

Troy starts with a huge feast organized by Menelaus, King of Sparta, in honour of their guests, Hector and Paris, princes of Troy, in order to make peace, as they had been bitter enemies all their lives. Nonetheless, the unbelievably attractive Paris, played by Orlando Bloom, falls in love with Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, who unfortunately is married to Menelaus, the host king. This fact doesn't stop Paris from running away with the Queen of Sparta. His unconscious, immature action will trigger a series of conflicts which the great Achilles, Ulysses, Hector or Priam see themselves involved in. 

After that brief introduction, I must admit that Troy is not one my favourite films because its director, Wolfgang Petersen, was much more concerned about making a blockbuster, that is to say, he paid more attention to the entertainment value than the historical accuracy. However, when I saw the film, a scene made a strong impression on me, maybe for its extreme tension and its beautiful soundtrack. I am talking about the awesome fight between Hector, prince of Troy, and Achilles, warrior of Sparta, which I would like to share with you. 

Thanks Maite. I'm delighted that you've posted another entry after a pretty long while, actually after your film review of Nosferatu back in November, is that right? 

That said, honestly I didn't think much of Troy when I saw the film either. I mean, it was entertaining enough, but the storyline was, to my mind, pretty weak and - I couldn't agree more with you - rather inaccurate as regards its historical background; moreover, I wouldn't say this is Mr Pitt's best performance to date, is it? But hey guys, if you disagree with Maite and me, we'd love to read your comments, wouldn't we Maite?

Maite Garcia: Nosferatu, a film by Murnau

Photography revolutionized the world of art owing to its characteristics: veracity, instantaneous results, etc. This amazing medium promoted the emergence of the cinema, whose essential base is the image in movement. Cinema has become a kind of art which is so typical at present. 

I declare myself as a cinema lover. Not only do I like a good script or moving performances but also I am very interested in the esthetic resources the cinema uses to tell us a story (its shots, frames or camera movements). So for that reason, I wish to talk about Nosferatu, a silent film directed by German filmmaker F. Murnau in the 1920s which I saw this weekend and really surprised me. Despite the fact that the movie is so old, it established a lot of keys in relation to horror movies. 

It is not the first film in which a vampire appears. However, it was the first one to be inspired by “Dracula”, whose author is Bram Stoker. In spite of changing the names of both the main characters and places, the story was suspiciously similar to Stoker's novel; that's why the widow's writer won a lawsuit to destroy all the copies. Fortunately, the destruction was not complete and nowadays we can still enjoy this masterpiece. 

Though Nosferatu belongs to German expressionism, this film introduces a few changes in this movement. Pictorial scenographies (which we could also see in “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari”) were abandoned so as to use scenes shot oudoors to evoke reality. Nowadays, horror films (“The Blair witch project”, “Rec”, “Paranormal activity”) use that resource to achieve more effectiveness. At an esthetic level, the carriage's scene must be mentioned, shot at a fast pace as a photo negative in order to announce that something terrible is going to happen. In fact, Stanley Kubrick included a similar sequence in “The clockwork orange” (Kubrick used a Durango 95 car instead of a carriage). It is important to analyze the illumination, because if someone is savage like Nosferatu, the light will be rough and dark. In contrast, victims and innocent people will appear against a soft light. Moreover, the shadows suggest the presence of the vampire, and also his death when they are destroyed. The use of a low angle is also remarkable in order to emphasize Nosferatu as the most evil paradigm.

Issues like the conflict between good and evil, and love as the only salvation are constants in this film. A great deal of the critics believe that these values are used in a metaphoric sense to reflect the fear Europe felt about the Nazi threat. We can relate this feeling to a dramatic scene where we can see a huge outburst of rats jumping off a ship to spread diseases. In this way, rats “prepare” the reign of Nosferatu. The vampire represents the darkest part of human heart as well; in fact, that reason leads him to his own destruction, when he stays / is staying with Ellen (his victim) and the sun is rising. This feeling has nothing to do with the desire associated with love, which is the main difference between Nosferatu and subsequent works by Tod Browning (“The mark of the vampire”) and F. F. Coppola (“Bram Stoker’s Dracula”). 

This movie is a great example of a horror tale but maybe it is also a journey into our evil, dark side personified by Nosferatu, the vampire. This monstrosity represents an interruption of the concept of “sublime”, which is defined as the observation of fear from a safety position, from a distance that allows our enjoyment. I believe Murnau breaks the distance and limits in quite an innovative, suggestive way so that his resources or techniques remain in modern films.

Thanks Maite, well done! I admit I have vague memories of Nosferatu, which I must have seen years ago. Perhaps I should have a go at it again after reading your post! In any case, I've found this clip of the film, actually the very beginning of it, so that your classmates get a taste of what this old movie looks like.